In general, complaining about all-star selections is a fruitless exercise. When fans are involved, the players having the best seasons are rarely picked anyway. Besides, there are typically way more gripes than there are available spots.

But still …

The Philadelphia Union sort of have a right to be annoyed that nobody on their team was voted by fans or picked by the coach or commissioner for this year’s MLS All-Star Game on July 31 in Kansas City.

Just take a look at some of the numbers:

Jack McInerney has scored 10 goals, led the MLS Golden Boot race for a good chunk of the season (he doesn’t anymore, in part because he missed the last three games because of US national team duty) and was named the league’s player of the month the first two months of the season.

Sebastien Le Toux leads the league with nine assists, which I’m told is an important category. He also has three goals.

Conor Casey has seven goals and four assists in just 1,086 minutes, one of the top five ratios in the league.

Sheanon Williams is tied for third in the league with seven assists, and he’s doing it all from defense, where he remains one of the league’s best right backs.

Amobi Okugo has three goals and three assists from defense and has joined McInerney as one of the league’s top breakout players

So what did manager John Hackworth think of the snubs?

“Certainly we have guys that have made a case for being all-stars,” he said during his weekly press conference Wednesday. “But, at the same time, the all-star game is interesting because it’s a popularity contest. I think about the Sons of Ben chanting during the game that nobody likes us. So it really doesn’t have anything to do with respect.”

A Union player could still be subbed onto the team as a late fill-in. But if that doesn’t happen, it would mark the first time in the franchise’s four-year history that no one on Philly played in the all-star game.

“It will always be in the back of our minds, at least for this season,” Williams said. “We have players that deserve to be in the game, so it’s tough. ... It will be motivation for the second half of the season to show we have good players capable of doing good things.”